Informatics in dental public health – A review

Abstract

In the recent times, when the world is taken over by the informatics and their usage in various fields, oral health is also much benefitted by this advancement. Public Health Dentistry has also been provided with its own share of the benefit. This specialty in dentistry deals with the communities, where the public health professionals need to be physically present there to collect the data, without which the analysis and interpretation cannot be commenced. Hence, for epidemiology and biostatistics to be established in a certain field of dentistry, the public health dentists, in the past, were required to visit from communities to communities, be it rural or urban. This not only consumed a major slot in their work schedule but also was very cumbersome. Hence, the development of informatics and its scope in public health has enabled the professionals in getting their work done not only efficiently but also effectively. This has also led to an increase in the pace with which they used to work and the quality of their outcomes. This article will review various modes of informatics being used in public health dentistry, their advantages, future prospects, and challenges faced by the specialist while utilizing it in their field and the scenario of informatics in India.